


for the weekend

by mullethyuck



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Christian Holidays, Dysfunctional Relationships, Feelings, Introspection, Kissing, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nostalgia, coming home, that doesn't go anywhere, the deep south, tldr; mark and hyuck will always be each other's vice, what kind of feelings? idk but there are feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28050459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mullethyuck/pseuds/mullethyuck
Summary: In which the ghosts of Mark Lee's past come back to haunt him.(Really, it's just one ghost. It's only ever been one.)
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	for the weekend

**Author's Note:**

> not gonna lie, this is (1) mostly projection and (2) a thinly veiled excuse to push my southern boy dreamie agenda but it's been stuck in my head ever since i first listened to the [song](https://open.spotify.com/track/7dW84mWkdWE5a6lFWxJCBG?si=ffVC3jSmSM-FpVptQOvbTA) that inspired it so i had to get it out of my system ><;
> 
> plus it was taylor's birthday yesterday when i started this so happy late bday tay <3

It’s strange, Mark thinks, being back in his childhood bedroom after so long.

He dumps his suitcase on the familiar bedspread, mattress squeaking from lack of use, and comes face to face with the Spider-man poster he put up when he was ten. Everything is the same as the last time he saw it, actually, down to a stray shoe that somehow found its way into the corner and never made the move when he ran off to chase bigger and better things. It even smells like nostalgia; there’s a plug-in behind his nightstand dispersing the scent of vanilla his mom loves so much throughout the room. He flops down onto the bed and realizes that even with the cognitive dissonance of it all, it is nice to be back.

He's in town for the holidays, but not really―just a few days in passing before he leaves again, back to his new life in a city that has long since lost its novelty but still doesn't feel like home. He's really only here to appease his mother and his own building sense of guilt over not visiting even once for the past five years. He wonders why his parents never turned this space into a guest room, or an office, or even storage, in all that time. He can’t decide if he’s grateful they left it in all its former glory or not.

His eye catches a framed photo on his dresser and he decides maybe it would’ve been better if they’d done a little redecorating. He frowns, pushing off the comforter and dragging himself downstairs to meet his mom in the kitchen where she’s tossing tea bags into boiling water. “Hey Mama, need some help?”

His mom turns away from the stove to press a kiss to his cheek. She has to lean up to reach; he’s grown since the last time he saw her. “Sure, baby. Stir this?” Mark nods, leaning against the countertop as he takes the wooden spoon from her hand, circling it around the pot lazily. His mom moves to bustle around the kitchen for a pitcher and some sugar. “So, do you have any plans to meet up with your old friends?” she asks, because she needs a plan like she needs air. She’s probably already got their whole weekend scheduled, knowing her.

Mark shakes his head, bangs flopping into his eyes. His mom gives him a look that means _you need a haircut,_ but he already knows that so he ignores it. “Not really,” is all the answer he gives her. He hasn’t talked to anyone here since he left, so there’s no reason to reach out now. He’d rather not get into all that with her if he can avoid it, though.

Then again, maybe he should’ve elaborated a little, because the next words that come out of her mouth are, “Oh, well Donghyuck is back for Christmas. I’m sure he’d love it if you went and saw him.”

Mark nearly drops the spoon with the force of his surprised jolt. “He’s back?” he asks. What he means is, _I didn’t know he ever left._ His mother hears, _I’m so glad._

His mom hums, absentmindedly measuring out sugar like Mark’s world isn’t crumbling down around him as she speaks. “Yeah.” She quirks an eyebrow at him, like he’s acting weird but not weird enough to warrant an interrogation. Mark hopes it stays that way. “He went to Loyola, you know? Law school, isn’t that wonderful.” She sounds proud of him, and she probably is. She’s always thought of him as a second son―or well, she did. Mark doesn’t know much about what she thinks of him now. “I talked to his mom the other day; he’s back on the Northshore for the break. Did you not know?” She tilts her head, genuinely curious.

Mark doesn’t tell her that he hasn’t known the details of Donghyuck’s life for half a decade. “No,” he says simply.

“Oh, wait, take the bags out,” his mom instructs, and Mark uses the spoon to squeeze all the liquid out before he throws them away. He stands by dutifully as his mom pours the tea into the pitcher and says, “He really would love to hear from you,” because southern hospitality doesn’t allow for drifting apart. “You two were so close.”

Mark would like to tell her that the emphasis is on the past tense, that they haven’t been any semblance of close since the day Mark said he was leaving, that Donghyuck probably wants nothing to do with him now, but he doesn’t say any of that. “Is he staying with his parents?” he asks, because he has to pretend to be interested in rekindling their relationship or his mother will only be more insistent. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, but it’s only half the reason.

“I didn’t ask, but I’d assume so,” his mom says, dumping the sugar in the pitcher and dusting her hands off on her apron. “Now stir.” Mark does, sneaking a taste when the sugar is half dissolved. The tea is super sweet, just how he likes it. His mother doesn’t mention Donghyuck again.

That doesn’t stop Mark from thinking about him. Actually, Donghyuck is nearly all he thinks about that night. It doesn’t help that every time he tosses and turns in bed, he’s met with pictures of Donghyuck scattered across his wall, on the dresser, a shelf in the corner. It’s impossible to get any sleep when he knows what waits for him behind his eyelids is nothing but a memory, haunting him through every 5x7.

He finally gives up and rolls out of bed, throwing on sweatpants and his ratty old sneakers because they’re the comfiest shoes he owns. He doesn’t need to sneak out―he’s a grown man, for god’s sake―but he walks to the front door as quietly as he can anyway, careful not to disturb the squeaky board on the second to last step. At the bottom of the staircase, it only takes two long strides and then he’s out in the brisk air, eyes adjusting to the porch light.

He gets in his car and drives. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but nighttime solitude has always brought a sense of clarity with it in a way he can’t describe, and he loses himself in the songs of his favourite playlist at full volume. He takes the backroads so no one hears him belt the lyrics at the top of his lungs and rolls the windows down so the muggy air makes everything a little sticky, and his body isn’t used to it anymore but it’s comforting all the same. The breeze rushing over his outstretched hand through his open window makes him feel like he can breathe again.

He’s parked before he really even registers where he is. It’s the lot behind the football field, next to a Methodist church that had seen better days even back when Mark was in high school. He’s pulled up against the old chain link fence they used to jump to skip P.E. when the August heat was smothering them like a wet blanket, and he leaves his headlights on to stare out at the bleachers. There’s nothing special about them, really, and the field itself doesn’t even look like the one in Mark's memory. He wonders if that much has changed, or if his tunnel vision was just too overwhelming the last time he was here for him to bother noticing much else.

Another pair of headlights flashes in his rearview mirror moments before a truck pulls up next to him. The lights cut off, and Mark knows that truck, knows that _walk._ The crunch of gravel is all too familiar in ways it shouldn’t be.

Someone knocks on the hood of his car, and Mark doesn’t have to look up to know who it is. “You lost?” Donghyuck asks, and Mark thinks, _not anymore._

Mark squints at him through the dark. “How’d you find me?” It’s a simple question, not loaded like any of the other things fighting on the tip of Mark’s tongue.

Donghyuck just looks at him, nothing but a ghost right out of his childhood, and don’t ghosts bring cold air with them? Mark thinks if he had his windows rolled up right now, they’d be fogged over from the ice in Donghyuck’s eyes. “Your mom told my mom you were back,” is all he says. Mark fills in the rest on his own.

“Sorry,” he says, but he isn’t entirely sure what he’s apologizing for. “I didn’t have the heart to tell Mama.”

Donghyuck sighs, and it suddenly hits Mark that he looks so much _older_ than the last time Mark saw him. He’s finally lost all his baby fat, grown a couple inches, and got a new haircut that accentuates his cheekbones in a way that would have ruined Mark’s life once upon a time. Now everything Donghyuck does ruins his life, including: “I didn’t tell my mom, either. Kinda hoped if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be real.”

Mark doesn’t know how to react to that. All that comes to mind is an echo of all those years ago, and it’s not like he can burn this particular bridge twice, so he says it. “I would never ask you to wait.”

The corner of Donghyuck’s mouth tilts up in a halfhearted attempt at a smirk, eyes melting into something more like Mark remembers. “And I’d never ask you to stay.”

Mark just unlocks the doors, and Donghyuck only hesitates for a second before he climbs into the passenger side. He’s beautiful in the yellow glow of the overhead light, and Mark regrets everything about this in a way that makes it impossible to stop. “I missed you.”

Donghyuck’s breath hitches in his throat, and Mark wants to kiss the mole there. “I missed you too, asshole.” He says it without any bite, but Mark knows he means all of it.

Mark just gives him a tiny smile, the best he can muster under the circumstances. He really is glad to see Donghyuck, even if it feels a bit like a serrated knife being twisted into his chest, straight through the ribs into his vitals. Somehow it also feels like coming home after a long, hard day, even though he’s been in his hometown for nearly fourteen hours now. It’s just residual camaraderie from the kind of bond that only forms when you're young and figuring out the world together, he tells himself. He knows it’s more than that.

He looks up at Donghyuck, and something catches his eye. “You never did bother cleaning the mud off, did you?”

Donghyuck turns to look at his truck, the same one he’s had since they were sixteen and felt like the world was theirs because they could conquer it one road at a time. They went mudding every chance they got in the woods behind Donghyuck’s house, and he was always too lazy to care about washing it off. “It’ll just get dirty again,” he always used to say, and it’s what he says now, too.

Mark huffs out a laugh, more a puff of air than anything. “You have time to go mudding at law school?” He can feel his eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline as Donghyuck rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, I do,” he says, miffed. “Jaemin made sure I didn’t drown in research papers last semester.” He folds his arms, and Mark can’t tell if it’s a defense mechanism or he’s just being petulant.

It doesn’t matter, really. Mark is too fixated on _Jaemin,_ whoever that is. In the end, the details don’t make a difference; either way, this glimpse into Donghyuck’s new life breaks the spell, pulls Mark out of his fantasy that maybe things haven’t changed as much as he thought they did. That maybe Donghyuck would always be the same, and he’d always be here waiting even if Mark left a thousand times over. It was cruel of Mark to hope he would, but that never stopped him before.

It doesn’t stop Mark from unbuckling his seatbelt, leaning over the center console to slip his hand over Donghyuck’s jawline, cradling it like it’s something precious, delicate. It doesn’t stop him from whispering, “Tell me to stop,” and rubbing gentle circles across Donghyuck’s cheek with his thumb as he waits for a protest he knows will never come. It doesn’t stop him from tilting his head and slotting their lips together, muscle memory picking up a rhythm even after all this time. It doesn’t stop Donghyuck from kissing him back, either.

It’s a goodbye kiss and they both know it, the closure their younger selves didn’t have the courage to ask for. It means nothing in the grand scheme of things, because it all ends the same; Mark will leave again, and Donghyuck will go on and carve his own place in the world without him. They want different―irreconcilable―things, even more than they want each other. No matter how badly they want each other.

Donghyuck drags his teeth along Mark’s bottom lip, and Mark nips him back, and they both open up in ways they never could put into words, and Mark wonders if things would have been different if Donghyuck had been enough to keep him here. Here in this town, here in this moment, here on a path he didn’t take but maybe should have. No one will ever know him like Donghyuck; no one will understand him the way Donghyuck does, no matter how many poems he writes or songs he produces or speeches he makes. It’s something that can’t be taught, this kind of connection. The kind that shakes you to the core, bares your soul, changes your world. It’s all too romantic for an uncomfortable makeout in the front seat of a dark car, but that’s how it’s always been with Donghyuck. He’s always made Mark’s mundane world feel grandiose just by existing in it.

Mark doesn’t voice any of it. He knows all too well how this goes, and he’s content to bite bruises into Donghyuck’s collarbones and pepper kisses on every mole he can reach, and that’s all there is. This is all they have, and Mark refuses to ruin it by stating the obvious.

Mark is the first to pull away, because he always is. They’re both panting, and Donghyuck’s skin is blooming purple beneath the collar of his t-shirt, and Mark’s lips are all but numb, kiss-swollen. “Hyuck.” It’s just a breath, not even a whisper, but Donghyuck can hear it from inches away. “I have to go.”

Donghyuck presses his eyes closed, and Mark knows he’s trying not to cry. He hates himself for making Donghyuck want to. “I know.”

They don’t move for a solid minute, Mark’s hand resting in the dip where Donghyuck’s neck meets his shoulder, Donghyuck’s fingers still twisted in the front of Mark’s sweatshirt. Mark lets his hands fall into his lap, only lifting one of them to gingerly loosen Donghyuck’s grip on the fabric over his chest. He runs his thumb across Donghyuck’s knuckles, brushing his lips against the calloused skin there before letting Donghyuck go for the last time.

Mark doesn’t cry until he’s back in his old bedroom staring at a selfie of them from graduation. He takes all the pictures out of the frames after that.

When he gets back to LA, he’ll prepare for his first album release, plaster on a smile for the press, and wonder if Donghyuck is watching. He’ll wonder if Donghyuck can tell he's faking it. He’ll know Donghyuck can. Donghyuck’s the only one who always could.

* * *

The midday sun shines its blessing down on them as they toss their caps into the sky, splashes of black against an endless blue. Infinite, open, just like their futures. Most of them don't know what they'll do, even if they think they have it figured out―that's a lot of weight to place on a kid's shoulders―but for now, all they feel is free. The moment is unbreakable, unmarred by the uncertainty of tomorrow. They’ll deal with that after they revel in the small victory of conquering the biggest milestone in the first eighteen years of their life.

Donghyuck is still seventeen when Mark meets him under the bleachers and says he needs to talk. They've taken pictures, made the rounds, said their goodbyes to people they won't keep in touch with and promised their families a celebration later. This is the one goodbye Mark doesn't want to say, but it's also the only one that matters.

He kicks a rock and watches it bounce off the metal support beam with a _clang_ as Donghyuck shifts on his feet in front of him. He’s only a foot away, but he feels unreachable. “I have something to tell you,” Mark breathes out, because that’s all he can think to say besides what he actually came here to tell Donghyuck. He’s stalling, and they both know it.

They both know what’s coming, too. “Okay,” Donghyuck says flatly. It’s monotone, noncommittal, absolutely devoid of feeling. Everything Donghyuck usually isn’t. His tone fills Mark with something like dread, even if he’s the one delivering the fatal blow.

Mark just looks at him for a solid minute; memorizes every plane of his face and the way his lips curve into a knowing smile as a default. He looks at those eyes that have seen him better than anyone else in the world ever has (ever could, probably) and blurts it out before he can second guess himself. “I’m moving to LA.”

Donghyuck doesn’t react except a tiny nod and a soft, “When?”

“Next week,” Mark says despite every fiber of his being screaming at him to flee the scene, forget this whole conversation and climb through Donghyuck’s bedroom window tomorrow morning like nothing happened. Donghyuck wouldn’t question it. “I figured it doesn’t make much sense to stay for the summer, since I’m not going to school.” It’s a sad attempt at a swift end, but there’s no use prolonging the inevitable.

Donghyuck’s smile falls, eyebrows pulling together ever so slightly, like he’s caught off guard and trying not to show it. In his defense, Mark hadn’t planned on leaving so soon, either; he scored a last-minute internship for the summer, and the opportunity was too good to pass up. He doesn’t say any of that, because Donghyuck has already recovered. “Oh. Okay.” His smile hasn’t returned. Mark doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this. Donghyuck has never been one to give up without a fight.

That’s the thing, though―there’s nothing to fight for here. They’ve been circling _something_ for months now, but senior year and the hesitancy of their unknown futures kept them from giving it a name. It’s safer that way, they told themselves. They may feel invincible with their whole lives ahead of them, but a piece of paper and a birthday that claims you as an adult don’t cure scared kids of their insecurities.

You can’t lose something that you never had. So why does Mark feel like he can’t breathe, heart shattering behind his stuttering ribcage? “Do you think you’ll come back?” Donghyuck asks, and the little glimmer of hope in his voice is the nail in the coffin.

Mark shakes his head to distract himself from the shake in his fingers. “Not for a while. I’m gonna be busy, you know? It’s hard to make it in the music industry. Gotta pay my dues.” He shrugs lamely, because for all the lyrics and poems he’s scribbled in the margins of his chemistry homework, he doesn’t have the words to explain that he’d never have the will to stay in California if he knew Donghyuck was back here waiting for him.

Donghyuck just nods again. “So this is it, then?” _Fifteen years of friendship ended, just like that?_ he doesn’t ask. _We could’ve been so much more,_ he doesn’t say. _We still could be, if you let us._

Mark hears it, anyway. “I won’t ask you to wait for me, as long as you don’t ask me to stay.” Neither one of them will get what they want. It’s only fair, Mark reasons.

“I won’t, then.” Donghyuck nods a final time, but it’s more for himself than for Mark’s benefit. “I won’t ask you to stay.” His eyes are glassy, but he doesn’t let the tears fall. Mark knows he’ll wait till he’s alone in his comfiest hoodie and can blast his saddest playlist through his headphones at full volume to let it all out. He hates that he knows that―that he’ll be the reason for it. “I just wish I was enough to make you want to.”

 _You are,_ Mark wants to say. _I do._ But he’s always been told his dreams are more important than any boy, and he can’t afford to miss his chance. “Sorry, Hyuck. I want something bigger than you can give me.” It’s a low blow, and he knows it, but it’s not a lie. Somehow, that makes Mark feel even worse.

It works, though. Donghyuck’s lip quivers for a split second before he sets his shoulders, steps forward and presses a gentle kiss to Mark’s cheek. “Goodbye, Mark Lee. I hope you find everything you’re looking for.” Then he turns on his heel, ducks back out into the sun, and he’s gone.

Mark watches him hop the fence behind the bleachers and jog to his truck, tires still crusted with dirt from the last time they went mudding. Donghyuck fumbles for his keys, yanks open the door and looks back one last time, meeting Mark’s eyes just long enough for Mark to send what he hopes is a reassuring smile. He knows Donghyuck can see right through it, can see his heart breaking in real time as it withers and dies in his chest. Donghyuck pulls out of the parking lot, and Mark gets the feeling that he’s the one being left behind.

When Mark finally finds his parents waiting out on the football field, he’ll blame his watery eyes on the brightness of the blazing sun.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't usually go here but markhyuck have such a good dynamic,, they're interesting to write
> 
> also this was 100% set in my hometown so if it's weirdly specific yeah that's why lmao
> 
> anyway swifties and markhyuck stans let's be [moots](https://twitter.com/mullethyuck) <3


End file.
